A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Only He who really lived a human life (and I presume that only one did) can fully taste the horror of death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Understanding the depth of life's experiences allows one to grasp the true significance of death.
C. S. Lewis suggests that only someone who has fully engaged with the experiences and emotions of human life can truly appreciate the weight and horror that death brings. This perspective emphasizes the importance of living a rich, authentic life to comprehend the finality and fear associated with mortality.
Themes
LifeDeathHuman ExperienceMortalityExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech to inspire students to live life to the fullest.
More from C. S. Lewis
All quotes βI enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
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Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
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Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
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I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
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The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
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Similar quotes
A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Marquis De SadeRead
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
Ayn RandRead
I would say it simply: No one can give that which he doesn't personally possess, which means we cannot transmit the Holy Spirit in an effective way, render the Spirit perceptible, if we ourselves aren't close to the Spirit.
Pope Benedict XviRead
To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things.
Oswald ChambersRead
This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.
Jonathan SwiftRead